I’m not really much of a sports fan, but a month or two ago I decided to watch the World Cup since everyone was hyping it up. Surprisingly, I really enjoyed it, particularly the matches in the later stages of the tournament. However, I also noticed some of soccer’s glaring flaws, flaws that I believe hold the sport back from being a prime pastime in America. Bear in mind that I am no expert on this matter. Other than briefly playing in elementary school, I have little experience with soccer and am approaching this from the perspective of a total outsider. Also, although the rest of this article will be rather critical, I again want to establish that I had fun watching the World Cup and think soccer is an awesome sport. With that said, here are three problems I have with soccer’s rules, along with how I’d fix them.

#1. Offsides

The current offsides system, along with my next complaint, destroys the pacing of the game. During the World Cup final, the commentators were proclaiming that it was the most exciting final in decades. That doesn’t have to be the case! There shouldn’t be so many 0-0 and 1-0 soccer games. I understand the spirit of the offsides ruling; strikers shouldn’t be allowed to cherry-pick and stand right next to the opposing goalie the whole game. Unfortunately, the offsides system takes things so far in the opposite direction that it creates an entirely new problem. If the striker has any body part that is ahead of any of the defenders at the time that the ball is kicked, it is ruled offsides. So often, it seems like goals are robbed from teams because their striker was *barely* ahead of the defender. This strict ruling leads teams to play more passively than I would prefer. Instead of trying to send balls ahead and be aggressive, they have to wait for the perfect opportunity to attack, lest their goal be recalled by an offsides call. Personally, I would love it if a “half-body” rule was implemented. If less than half of the striker’s body is past the defender, the goal should count and not be ruled offside. This wouldn’t give strikers a massive jump on the defense but would allow teams to play with more wiggle room when attacking. Additionally, it would lead to higher-scoring games, which would then force the other team to start playing more aggressively and make the overall game more exciting.

#2. Stoppage Time

Due to how difficult the offsides ruling makes it for a team to score, want to guess what happens when a team finally manages to score? Camping. Massive amounts of camping. This lame playstyle is enabled by soccer’s clock system. Unlike in other sports, soccer’s clock does not stop whenever play stops for any reason. Instead, the referee guesstimates how much additional time should be added at the end of each half to account for breaks in play. Since referees almost never add an accurate amount of time, the winning team is encouraged to stall out the clock. There’s a free kick? Hold on, the player needs to move the grass around the ball to make sure it’s just right. The goalie grabbed the ball? First, the goalie will hug the ball on the ground for a few seconds and wait for his teammates to pile on top of him for no apparent reason. Then he’ll bounce the ball a few times (wrong sport buddy) and wait another 15 seconds before punting the ball. There’s a throw-in? Let’s have one teammate go grab the ball, then signal to the other teammate across the field and have them throw it instead. You’ll watch the player slowly “jog” to the ball before grabbing it and then wait extra long while he “decides” who to throw it to. 

The most famous example of stalling is players exaggerating their injuries. Why do the players have to roll on the ground EVERY TIME they fall? If the player was actually seriously injured, they wouldn’t be hitting the stop-drop-and-roll to make themselves feel better. Could you imagine if players pulled this in any other sport? A football player would get completely clowned for squirming on the ground only to pop back up a minute later. The motive behind this act is partially to draw a penalty, but it also forces the ref to stop the game and give players a chance to argue with the ref, which wastes more time. Between all of these time-burning techniques, it can feel as if soccer games are being interrupted constantly. And yeah, they are. On average, a 90-minute soccer game only has 60 minutes of actual playing. By switching to a traditional clock, soccer games would have 90 full minutes of action, and interruptions wouldn’t be as intentionally drawn-out as they are currently. 

#3. Penalty Kicks

This might be controversial, but I’m gonna say it: penalty kicks are an anticlimactic way to end a soccer game. Penalty kicks are not a metric of a team’s abilities. At its core, a penalty kick comes down to a player’s capacity to execute a basic shot and the goalie’s luck in guessing which corner the player will choose to aim for. At best, you’re taking a player’s situational skill and using it to decide a game. It’s like having a basketball game be decided on a free throw contest. In addition, using penalty kicks as a tiebreaker further encourages teams to stall for time. If you know going into a game that your team is worse than the other team, a viable strategy is to play extremely defensively for the entire game and then hope to beat the other team in penalty kicks. There’s a low chance of a bad team beating a good team in a standard match, but there’s basically a 50-50 chance that a bad team beats a good team in penalty kicks. My solution to this is simple. Soccer should revert back to its old tie-breaking system: sudden death (sometimes called the golden goal). Watching next-goal-wins gameplay is so much more exciting than watching penalty kicks. Knowing that the game could end at any moment keeps you on the edge of your seat. Sudden death was likely discarded because since soccer is so low-scoring, games would drag on for too long. However, I believe that by implementing some of the other changes I’ve mentioned above, teams will be playing in a more offense-oriented style already, so a lack of scoring won’t be as much of a problem. The golden goal is so hype; they should 100% bring it back.

Do you agree with the changes I’m proposing? Are true soccer fans disgusted reading this? I have no idea, but let me know in the comments.